


The Lavender Case Files

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Closeted Character, F/F, Failed Rebound Romance, Flashbacks, Implied surrogacy, Infidelity, M/M, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28844613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: "I know." Nat buttons her blouse. The Boston skyline sings from the window, the crush of people and cars a dulling thrum through the shut blinds. Summer is bright and warm and smoking the hotel room until everything is dizzy with the scent of sex. It's midday. They usually do this at night, when Nick works late. "But you can't keep this up forever, Jen.""I know that, too." Jenny pulls the cover-up over her lap. "But he's got so much on his plate right now. I can't add to that. When the Winter case is over, I tell him. Let him down gentle like."Nat and Nick Valentine share a mutual ghost.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Jennifer Lands, Female Sole Survivor/Piper Wright, Jennifer Lands/Nick Valentine, John Hancock/Nick Valentine
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	The Lavender Case Files

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.
> 
> This is a very old story, playing around with concepts/character. I finally decided to dust it up and post it. (The final version of this character is quite different. :P) So take it as it is.

Nat didn’t go to the police station until she really had to, to pick up any potential clients. Not great business practice, to loiter outside cells and station doors to pawn off her services to an idiot who didn’t know his ass from a legal document.

Times were hard, so when she got a call from her agency about some bum sniffling down in Boston Station about armed robbery, she dragged herself out of bed and headed downtown without even a brush through her hair. It was cold, just before Christmas. The multicoloured lights were foggy in the thick pollution. She remembers walking beneath them, hungover and weak with hunger. She’d been late to the ration office and they’d turned her away.

She had been hightailing it through the sleepy hall of the holding cells, finally collapsing in a huff on a chair outside the interrogation room. The opposite door swung open, and in place of a policeman, there was this girl in a daisy dressing gown, subconsciously tugging her it over her nightie. In her hand was a brown paper bag.

“You okay, Jenny?” The caretaker was quick to sweep in, and Nat couldn’t blame him. Jenny was short, soft, all round curves beneath her bedclothes. Pretty too, in the kind of wholesome way Nat tended to ignore, what with her sensible pixie cut (very unfashionable right now) and make up free smile.

“Nick forgot his dinner.” Nat faced the door, swinging her leg back and forth, but her ears cottoned on to that voice. She had a tone like a Nursery School teacher, all clear and kind, and Nat didn’t have to be a private eye to twig that was her job, or something like that. Maybe a Nurse, what with that matronly figure. “Mam called me out tonight. She’d been sick, and I saw he’d left it on the side, so I…” She holds out the brown paper bag. “Could you give it to him, Charlie?”

“Of course, Jenny.” Maybe Charlie wasn’t a perv after all. Nat had dared a look and saw the elderly caretaker was looking at her fondly, like a Granddad. Hah, good. “He’ll be mighty pleased. You know what happens if he don’t eat. He smokes like a chimney and clogs up all my window frames with nicotine. It’s a bitch to scrape off.”

“I’ll tell him,” Jenny had said with a laugh. Nat had yawned and looked at her watch, only to see a pair of brown feet in blue powderpuff slippers had stopped short of the door. There was a rustle of paper, and a bag was placed gently onto the seat next to her.

Nat looked up.

The girl was smiling down at her. She was no older than thirty, even if the freckles and high cheeks could have implied younger, but the moon of her enormous green eyes was warm and wise.

“Hey,” She said, gently. “You look like you’re about to drop, if you don’t mind me saying. It’s awful late to be working. I have a spare lunch here; you should have it.”

Nat’s traitorous stomach rumbled, and Jenny’s full, dark lips spread across her cheeks until her eyes crinkled with the smile, and heat radiated in Nat’s stomach, curling up around her heart.

“Awful kind, beautiful.” She picked it up. Cram and cheese sandwich, with the crusts cut off. She hated this Nick fella immediately. “Thanks. I won’t say no.”

It was three o’clock in the morning, and here was typical Nat, flirting with a total stranger, and she expected Jenny to laugh tight and awkward, as all straight women did when she turned it on like a faucet.

But Jenny didn’t. She giggled, unsure, pulling her dressing gown across her chest, and Nat saw the nervous twitch of her eye falling on her face, her hands, the smooth arch of her ankle half fallen out of her strap backs.

The door down the hallway opened, and a rusty Boston accent called Jenny’s name. Nat didn’t even bother to look down at who it was. She could guess, anyway, for the lady snapped up, as if coming to, and with a final smile at Nat, padded down the hall to greet the Inspector.

Nat lit her cigarette and watched the scene steadily. The Inspector was a fair two decades older than her, a broad man slightly soft in the stomach, a classic hard-boiled detective from the pulps. Loose jowls, with grey touching the corners of his dark hair.

That would have been that if the kiss Jenny planted to Nick’s cheek wasn’t so dry and quick, and if she hadn’t keep looking back with a shy, nervous smile.

* * *

"You told him that?"

"I haven't," Jenny shifts the cover from her waist. She's all soft, long breasts spilt over over her pouched tummy. "I can't right now, Nat. It's really bad, lately. He's not sleeping or eating right."

She chews her lower lip. Their smudged, shared lipstick has drawn bright on her apricot cheeks.

"I know." Nat buttons her blouse. The Boston skyline sings from the window, the crush of people and cars a dulling thrum through the shut blinds. Summer is bright and warm and smoking the hotel room until everything is dizzy with the scent of sex. It's midday. They usually do this at night, when Nick works late. "But you can't keep this up forever, Jen."

"I know that, too." Jenny pulls the cover-up over her lap. "But he's got so much on his plate right now. I can't add to that. When the Winter case is over, I tell him. Let him down gentle like."

"You couldn't be anything but gentle," Nat crouches over the covers; kisses her. Jenny melts. "Do you want to stay with him?"

"I'm not gonna tie myself into a lavender marriage," Jenny turns her head and lights a cigarette. "I care about him, Nat. He's a good man."

"Not the man for you."

"No. But he made me feel safe, walked me home, kept the thugs off my streets. It's nice, but..." She pauses. Nat shrugs and zips up her skirt. Men are the all the same, she reckons, even the nice ones. Poor bastard has even proposed, maybe as a last-ditch attempt to stop her running off as he works later, sleeps more, forgets birthdays and anniversaries.

But Nat happened, and Jenny, like so many like her, had realised some home truths a little too late, like the difference between duty and care, passion and comfort. How you can mistake one thing for another.

Jenny blows smoke into the boozy air and catching Nat's eye, beams like radium glow.

I can give her all of that, Nat thinks dreamily. All of it, and more.

* * *

When she fell in love with Jenny, it was the day she got the news her brother had been gunned down by the reds.

She hadn't been close to her twin. Nathan had been burly and stoic and kind of stupid when it came to having a sister. He'd been kind though, and protective, but they'd drifted apart since she clapped herself off to Law School and he joined up to evade his Dad's fate of a layman.

But she had stood in the elevator in silence, the telegram crinkled between her hands, fat tears dripping off her nose.

She'd barely heard Jenny's heels clack up beside her, couldn't even see her face through the grog of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Jenny had whispered. Downstairs, the men had bustled together, Nick and Gibbs and Harry, fighting terminals and scouring maps for some lowlife called Winter. Jenny's palms were cool on her cheeks. "Nat, I am so, so sorry."

The kiss was unexpected. They never did that here, not even in private, not even in locked rooms and back alleys. Hotels and personal apartments were the hives of their activity. But Jenny had kissed her mouth, her cheek, her soft, wide arms secure around her shoulders, the stab of her earring scraping against Nat's neck.

Nat hid her face inside her shoulder, caught the waft of lavender and cigarette smoke, the by-product of Nick's filthy habit.

"I love you," Jenny had whispered into her ear. "I love you so much. I can't bear you like this. What do you need, what can I do?"

"I just want you with me," Nat had lent into the kiss. The men below shuffled and argued and smoked and the police station was thick with the haze of it. But Jenny was fresh, open, lovely. Flowers and pinewood perfume. "Always. Promise me, please."

"Always," Jenny didn't hesitate. The fact she didn't - and Jenny always hesitated, poked and prodded at her conscience until she could make all the spiky parts fit, could live with herself - told her that she was telling a simple truth. "Once this is all over, we'll be together."

* * *

She's only gotten sight of Nick once before. She'd caught him walking Jenny home one night. She'd been laughing at his story, and he'd been watching her young face as if she'd hung the moon, and he'd touched her hand, and she'd smiled, tight and tolerant, and turned her head.

The shadows dip beneath the thing's hat and two lantern eyes glare out from under the tip. He lights a cigarette, murmurs about heroines and cliches and that voice, that goddamn voice.

When she'd heard the name, she'd reckoned it was a throwback, a trick of the tongue.

But this is the scarlet hearted man who will take her to her son, and it's a shadow, a ghost, a goddamn judgement.

He pauses, taps away his cigarette ashes as if he's sat on in the sub shop reading the late edition, and she's just staring, jaw clamped so tight her teeth grind in her gums. Piper mutters a disappointed _Blue_ before she sees the look on her face, sees the fear.

He finally growls, impatient, and as he looks up she looks down.

"I know the metal parts aren't comforting," He says, a little softer. "But why go to so much trouble to spring me loose?"

"My son." She ducks her voice back into her throat. "He's missing. I need help."

The vault is crawling with triggermen and radroaches and the stink of debris and death, and yet nothing touches the ice-cold swell in her stomach.

"Okay," Valentine says very slowly. He's looking at her hard, a flicker in his yellow iris. Nat turns toward Piper. "We'll get out here first. Then, you can regale me with the details."

His footsteps fall beside her. His face is torn, textured, teeth all exposed, grey metal.

She thinks of his sunken cheeks, his red eyes, his hand trembling over his fedora held to his chest.

He looks at her again.

When he is a fair distance away, Nat tears a vault helmet from her bag, and pulls it down over her ears, her eyes, hooks back her auburn hair into the body of it.

"Blue?" Piper's voice is a soft incision in their shared breath. "What is it?"

Nick is wandering ahead, but his face is turned, slowly to the side, listening.

"Nothing." Nat exhales. "It's nothing."

* * *

Piper is nothing like Jenny. She's thin, wired, small-breasted. She's pretty, though, a wisecracking kind of a beauty you'd find in old pulp magazines. It doesn't take long for them to fall into bed, for Piper to wiggle up beside her and kiss her neck and face and whisper she's never been in love before.

She sounds so young, so unsure, the chilly glower of the disgruntled journalist given way to her anxious need for attention. Nat shouldn't think like that. Piper is the only bit of sense she's found in this wild, warped wasteland, and she does love her, she can, she _will._

But Piper isn't Jenny, and in this world, they'll never be another Jenny again. She modifies an old automatic shotgun. It's barely more powerful than a pipe pistol and even Piper scoffs at it, but she straps it to her back, feels the cold weight of it stir between her shoulder blades each time she takes to the wastes.

Wait for me, Jenny. She whispers to nothing but herself. Dogmeat whines around her feet. Wherever you are, wait for me.

She has a son somewhere, she knows.

She doesn't even care if she sees him again (if she lives or dies.)

He was meant for Jenny, after all. For _them._

A promise that has long since gone dead.

* * *

"She was beautiful," Synths can't get drunk. Not the kind of Synth Valentine is, anyway, but he sounds it, all strangled and thick, as if his processors are clogged. He and the Mayor are sat in the corner, closed off from the rest of the bar, but Nat's ears are open, electric. Piper is curled up beside her, dreaming through the noise, mouth askew in the dip of her neck. Nat stares through the bottom of her glass. "And innocent. And Winter, that bastard. He killed her. My girl. I know she wasn't mine, not really, but she was real."

Not yours, a part of her wants to scream. Never, never, never.

"Hey," They're so close, Nick's cheek to Hancock's shoulder, a silent language that has begun to develop between them. "It's gonna be okay, Nick. We'll find him. We'll put him in the ground, I promise." There is the sound of something heavy, clattering, being placed on the table. Holotapes, ten of the things, laid out between them. "I scoured all the joints, you know. Not like me to scope out the local law enforcement." 

"You did that?" Nick's laugh shimmers low, pained. "Maybe I can convince you to go on the straight and narrow."

"Not a chance," drawls Hancock. Brazenly, he kisses him. It is the kind of affection Nat didn't think Nick was capable of, but Hancock is smooth and assured and Nick slips into his shadow within the low light. Nat strokes Piper's hair, kissing the curve of her forehead.

Jenny's memory runs like a lit vein between them. She hides her face in Piper’s hair, imagining the stubborn burn of Jenny's curl.

She opens her eyes.

Nick spreads the holotapes across the table. Hancock smokes steadily, lighting Nick's cigarette, and then, turns his head to stare, unabashed, at Nat.

"Piper," Nat murmurs into her girlfriend's ear, who stirs with a mumble. "Let's go, baby."

* * *

They've managed to wrangle a movie from one of the discarded vaults, and Diamond City security are going to project it onto the wall. It's a doozy, an old romantic western and Ellie had talked about nothing else for the past week. Piper had already shotgunned their seats with her little sister and was already there with sugar bombs and beer, and Nat had wandered through the streets with a lightness on her shoulders she hadn't felt in a long time.

"Ellie?" She pushes the door open. It's dark inside, and quiet. "You ready?"

The door swings shut behind her.

The golden discs of Nick's cat eyes stutter beneath his fedora.

It takes everything Nat has to not push herself back against the door. Panic draws dots against her eyes but she swallows hard, rubs her hands up and down her arms.

"Careful," He says. He stands. All the dark docks away the tatters of his face and neck. His silhouette could belong to any man. Could belong to a man of flesh and blood, even, with the name Valentine. "You twitch anymore and you'll jump out of your skin."

"Is Ellie here?" She clears her dry throat. "We're all meeting up to watch the film."

"I sent her ahead," His firelight eyes dance in the dark as he rounds the table. "She's expecting you shortly."

He pulls the door shut. There is the clink of a closing latch.

"I better go, then."

"Not so fast."

She hates his voice.

"Care to explain?" He mutters, and he finally switches on the light. His metal hand is poised over a series of photographs, old as nuclear fire, and Nat gasps back in her throat because it's Jenny, smiling over a milkshake (banana and caramel, with chocolate flakes, she had a sweet tooth so strong it made Nat's teeth ache at the thought) with her yellow dress in green polka dot and her apricot eyes, so warm with laughter, but she's not looking at Nick - the picture has been snapped from the side, as if from the bushes. And there, smiling through her bitter coffee, is Nat, in her dress suit, hair pulled back so tight you can see the tension in her temples. Her brow is unmarred.

The sub shop. The potholed road overlooking the Boston river. It's -

Her gaze travels up. Nick is watching her closely, intent, observing each change and twitch in her expression.

“It's too late. For the first time, she is maskless. She is naked, here, and he planned it all along.

"Je -!" She chokes it back to her gut. Tears swim beneath her lashes. "And w-what does this have to do with me?"

"I want the truth," He says, stony.

"I have nothing to tell you."

"The truth," He repeats, lighting a cigarette.

"No."

"NOW!" The chair clatters behind him. His cigarette drops from his teeth, and Nat's hand falls on her shotgun strapped to her back. Nick freezes, as if remembering himself, and swears, clutching his head. "It was in Winter's bunker. All of it." 

"What?" She cries. "Eddie Winter is still alive?"

"No." He taps his metal fingers on Nat's photograph. He is staring at her scar, calculating the age of it. She hates that. Whenever he looks at her as if she is another deduction. "Not anymore."

_It should have been me. I should have -_

"None of your business, Nick," She utters, cold.

"So you do know something, and you've decided to be difficult?"

"I owe you nothing," She spits out, and then, as if thorns have found their way into her mouth, and adds; "And neither did Jenny." 

Silence.

"I -" Nick straightens up. "I never said her name." 

"She was never your girl," Nat whispers between her fingers. "She was mine."

And there is the truth between them, like the breaking of a great dam, the exorcising of a ghost. Nat unlatches the door and leaves Valentine to his silence. She walks past the stadium, the glow of the old romance billowing on the radium wall and the laughing shapes of Piper and Ellie. She ascends the stairs, crosses the huge shack door and is finally, gone.


End file.
